you know what is that means........time to show off PAP's latest hardware!

On April 26, the Jiangsu Frontier Defense Contingent of the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force (APF) and the Transportation Department of east China’s Jiangsu Province held a joint security exercise for World Expo 2010 Shanghai at the Longtan Port in Nanjing with such departments as the Entry and Exit Inspection Bureau, the Quarantine Bureau, the Maritime Bureau and the Customs Office of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, and the Nanjing Sub-bureau of the Yangtze River Shipping Public Security Bureau.

At 12:30 on April 28, local time, Captain Takanobu Minami, commander of the Japanese escort taskforce in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast and commander of the Escort Division 6 of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, and other four Japanese naval officers boarded the “Guangzhou” guided-missile destroyer of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by taking a small boat from the “SAWAGIRI” guided-missile destroyer to have a face-to-face exchange with Zhang Wendan, commander of the 5th Chinese naval escort taskforce and deputy chief of staff of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy. This is the first meeting and exchange between commanders of the Chinese escort taskforce and Japanese escort taskforce.

The meeting was held in the west sea area of the Gulf of Aden. During the meeting, the two sides introduced their respective escort force composition, modes of escort organization, means of escort and ways of information collection, explored and analyzed the current escort situation in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast and exchanged views on information sharing and intelligence exchange during the escort process.

Zhang Wendan said that ever since the Chinese naval escort taskforce came to the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast to implement escort tasks, it had been attaching great importance to enhancing the information communication and intelligence sharing with escort warships of various countries. This meeting between commanders of the escort taskforces of the two countries is conducive to promoting the exchange and cooperation between the two sides in the future escort actions.

Takanobu Minami said that the Japanese escort taskforce was willing to carry out effective cooperation with the Chinese naval escort taskforce, in a bid to jointly safeguard the safety of the ships and personnel passing by.

Takanobu Minami and his party visited the “Guangzhou” warship after the meeting.

Last year the PLAN conducted an over-the-top dog-and-pony naval review to mark its 60th anniversary. This year’s celebration takes a much more low key approach by publishing a simple photo essay to the PLA Daily. The essay portrays a fairly standard PRC historical narrative -- from the "century of humiliation" at the hands of the seaborne imperialist, to the struggle of building a new nation after the revolution, to rejoining the world through openness and trade, and ultimately, to final revitalization.

The photography is professional and has been combined with traditional Chinese poems, making this one of the best propaganda attempts by the PLA Daily thus far.